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Born in Marylebone, London and raised in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France, Belloc was the only daughter of French barrister Louis Belloc and English feminist Bessie Parkes. Her younger brother was Hilaire Belloc, whom she wrote of in her last work, The Young Hilaire Belloc (published posthumously in 1956). Belloc's paternal grandfather was the French painter Jean-Hilaire Belloc, and her maternal great-great-grandfather was the theologian/philosopher Joseph Priestley. Her mother died in 1925, 53 years after her father.

She published a biography, H.R.H. The Prince of Wales: An Account of His Career, in 1898. From then on novels, reminiscences and plays appeared at the rate of one per year until 1946. She produced over forty novels in all - mainly mysteries, well-plotted and on occasion based on real-life crime,[2] though she herself resented being classed as a crime writer.[3]

Her mother died in 1925, fifty-three years after her father. In the memoir, I, too, Have Lived in Arcadia, published in 1942, she told the story of her mother's life, compiled largely from old family letters and her own memories of her early life in France. A second autobiography Where love and friendship dwelt appeared posthumously in 1948.

Ernest Hemingway praised her insight into female psychology, revealed above all in the situation of the ordinary mind failing to cope with the impact of the extraordinary.[4]

Eric Partridge noted a rare awkwardness on her part in the following passage: "There stood, a slight, white-clad figure, in the bright circle of light cast by one of the lamps which was still alight, of the car from which she had been flung".[5]